‘Short Hamstrings’ and the Dead Lift

mike_power. 20 July, 2017

Short Hamstrings and the Deadlift!

I myself the same as many other people out there have always struggled with ‘short hamstrings’. When I started to train compound lifting more seriously I found that this was a really limiting factor! Especially when it came to dead lifting. Having short hamstrings during the deadlift not only caused unwanted rounding of the lower back leaving me potentially more susceptible to injury but also limiting me from generating the greatest force I could driving from my legs!

Over the years I have tried stretching and foam rolling as part of my warm up routine to help improve hamstring length before doing my deadlifts but I have not found this to be the best method! For me by far the best method to warm up before a deadlift has been to carry out sets of light weight straight leg/Romanian deadlifts. Making sure you keep lower back straight you lower the bar as far down as possible and hold at the bottom. This serves two purposes within the warm up routine! One it causes activation of the hamstrings as well as then applying a stretch to the hamstring at the bottom of the movement.

I would always do 4 sets of 12 repetitions of this exercise before starting my normal deadlift! With this method I managed to not only improve my form but also make real progress with the weights I could lift. For anyone who does suffer with short hamstrings or even people who don’t I would really recommend this as an essential warm up exercise! More than anything because I feel it could help prevent potential injury through both reducing the unwanted lower back rounding and warming up the essential muscles! As well as this I feel you would see some real improvement in you overall deadlift performance!

I am not claiming that you will become the next Eddie Hall but this is about bettering our own personal performance and this has really worked for me! And maybe it could work for you too!

It would be great to get everyone’s opinion on this. What other people have done to improve there deadlift and just some general discussion around the subject of deadlifts so if you have anything to say please get involved with some discussion!